Pitoniak: Orange men have nothing to lose

Pitoniak: Orange men have nothing to lose

A friend of mine who bleeds Orange says that Syracuse University is now playing
with the house's money.

I think that's a good
way to look at it as the SU basketball team prepares to play in the school's
fifth Final Four Saturday night.

A second NCAA
championship obviously remains the goal, but given where the Orange men were
just three weeks ago, just making it this far in the tournament is pretty
remarkable.

The oddsmakers have
installed them as two-point underdogs against a Michigan Wolverines team that
obliterated a very good Florida team by 20 points Sunday afternoon. Sophomore
guard Trey Burke - the Sporting News' National Player of the Year - averages
18.8 points per game and he, Nik Stauskas and Tim Hardaway Jr. have the kind of
outside shooting ability to defuse a zone. Mitch McGary, a 6-foot-10 freshman,
and Glenn Robinson III can rebound and finish underneath.

Perhaps what's most
impressive about the Wolverines is that, despite fielding a young lineup, they
don't usually beat themselves. This is borne out by the fact they have averaged
the fewest turnovers (9.4 per game) in the nation this season and have been
whistled for the second fewest fouls.

So John Beilein's crew
is going to pose one tough challenge for the Orange men.

But let's not forget
that Michigan's Big Ten brethren also posed a huge challenge, with an
inside-outside game that was supposed to do in SU, and look what
happened?

Just as the Orange men
haven't faced a trio of 3-point shooters as good as Stauskas (45 percent), Burke
(38 percent) and Hardaway (39 percent), the Wolverines haven't faced a zone
defense as long and as tenacious as Syracuse's 2-3.

Vanquished NCAA
opponents Montana, Cal, Indiana and Marquette averaged a paltry 45.7 points vs.
Syracuse and shot just 29 percent from the field and 16 percent (14-for-92) from
beyond the 3-point arc. During that span the Orange men have forced 67 turnovers
and allowed just 61 field goals. They've averaged 11 steals and six
blocks.

Their most impressive
performance occurred in their Sweet 16 matchup with top-seed Indiana, when they
held the nation's third-most prolific scoring offense to a season low 50 points.
Then, Saturday, the Orange topped that clamp-down by allowing Marquette to score
just 39 - an Elite Eight record low by a team during the shot-clock
era.

The matchup of Michael
Carter Williams and Brandon Triche against Burke and Company should be fun to
watch. MCW has played like a top-five NBA draft pick of late. He had 24 points
against Indiana and contributed 12 points, eight rebounds, six assists and five
steals, while committing just one turnover vs. Marquette.

Beilein, who is
coaching in his first Final Four after 1,074 games, is familiar with the
Syracuse zone, having faced it several times during his days as the head man at
West Virginia and Canisius. He also became conversant with it while coaching at
Division II LeMoyne College, just a few miles from the Carrier Dome. Having a
week to prep for it will be helpful, but it's one of those things that's
difficult to replicate in practice.

Michigan and Syracuse
have experienced somewhat parallel seasons. Both got off to hot starts - the
Wolverines won their first 16 games while the Orange men won their first 10 -
and both stumbled down the stretch, Michigan losing five of its last 10
regular-season games, and Syracuse seven of its last 12.

But each team appears
to have returned to early-season form.

I think it will come
down to which backcourt plays better and if SU's backline of center Baye Moussa
Keita and forwards C.J. Fair and James Southerland can continue doing the job
defensively.

Of course, this all may
be a moot point, given the way Louisville is playing. The Cardinals pummeled
Duke into submission in the second half of Sunday's Elite Eight contest. The
domination conjured memories of a similar second-half pounding of SU in the Big
East title game three weeks earlier.

Regardless what
happens, the Orange men clearly have redeemed themselves in this tournament.
Anything from here on out is gravy for Jim Boeheim's 30-9 squad.

Author and columnist Scott Pitoniak has followed
SU hoops since the mid-1960s and has covered them since the mid-1970s. He is
author of "Color Him Orange: The Jim Boeheim Story." You can read more of his
stuff at www.scottpitoniak.com.